Artists at Continent's End: The Monterey Peninsula Art ...

In Artists at Continent's End Scott Shields delivers an engaging and informative history of an important California art colony, augmenting the record and correcting the many myths of Monterey. An essential addition to any serious collection on American art and culture. --Charles C. Eldredge, University of Kansas Scott Shields introduces readers to the colorful painters of the Monterey Peninsula, basing his account on deep research into contemporaneous sources. He is particularly adept at reading the paintings through the literature of the time, which he quotes to good effect. This is the best book ever published on early California art. --Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., President of the North Point Gallery, San Francisco Thoroughly researched, gracefully written, luminously illustrated, this elegant book documents the Monterey Peninsula as an epicenter of American art in the late nineteenth century and fin de siecle. How fortunate that so many talented painters found their way to this beguiling place--and that Scott Shields has now so compellingly told their story. --Kevin Starr, University of Southern California Artists at Continent's End makes a compelling case for the emergence of the Monterey Peninsula as 'the new spiritual heart of California' as early as 1875. Shields brings the rich artistic life of the Peninsula and the myriad of resident and visiting artists and writers who found inspiration there to vibrant life. --Patricia Trenton, author of Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945 Scott Shields gives us a delightful picture of an enchanting place--the Monterey Peninsula--and of a group of artistic characters who settled there, the bohemians who helped to define California in our collective imagination. Full of material that is new even to specialists in American cultural history, Artists at Continent's End reminds us yet again of how narrow is our understanding still of the development of modern movements on native soil. --Patricia Junker, Curator of American Art, Seattle Art Museum